The International Olympic Committee's chief coordinator for the Sochi Games said Monday the organization sounded a "red alert" in September because delays in hotel construction were posing a serious threat to the event.

In an interview, Jean-Claude Killy, the IOC's chief supervisor of the 2014 Olympics, offered the first public explanation for the rocky launch of these Games. Early arrivals here encountered unfinished hotels, unopened shops and myriad problems.

Killy, who won three Olympic gold medals skiing for France, said that despite making 40 trips to Sochi in the seven years leading up to the Games, he didn't understand the depth of the problem until last fall.

"We realized it too late," said Killy. Focused on getting the sports venues done, he added, private developers and oligarchs devoted less attention to hotel projects.

"All the alarms went up in September," Killy said. "I made a special trip. I said, 'What do we need to do?' There is no way to organize a Games if you cannot accommodate people."

Killy said he declared a "red alert," which required expanding a workforce that he said ultimately totaled 100,000 people working around the clock, seven days a week. The schedule, Killy said, cost organizers what was likely millions of dollars in additional pay.

Killy said a key to addressing problems was his access to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who IOC officials say provided unprecedented access for a head of state.

"We always had the capacity to go to the top man," said Killy, who met Putin over dinner in Guatemala City in 2007. "When you become friends with this guy and ask for something and you see it within two hours, that's very impressive."

Russia landed the Games after an appearance by Putin at the IOC meetings in Guatemala City. The decision represented the IOC's biggest gamble in modern times, according to Michael Payne, the former director of marketing for the IOC. The organization is making a similar bet on the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro.

Killy said these risks are necessary because the IOC has an obligation to spread its values of fair play and friendship through sports to the developing world, and to create opportunities for sports participation through the construction of world-class venues. Russia, he said, was a winter-sports nation but had little sports infrastructure.

Going into the project, Killy—the IOC's chief coordinator for the 2006 Turin Games—knew little about this city where people can swim in the sea and ski the nearby mountains on the same day. He felt good about the project because Russia had good people working on it: "foreign-educated, people from Harvard, Stanford, KGB."

Two months after the vote, Killy packed warm clothes and a heavy coat for a trip to Sochi but wound up sweating heavily throughout a news conference. At the time, the area in Adler where the Olympic Park now stands was a swamp. There was no ski resort and little in the way of facilities in the Caucasus Mountains in Rosa Khutor.

Sochi needed to build 22,000 hotel rooms, a new highway 30 miles into the mountains and a train line that would run beside it. The bill would eventually rise to more than $50 billion, even though organizers altered plans as construction was under way and saved money, such as deciding against building a second train line to the mountains.

By last summer the sports facilities were nearly complete and organizers had held more than 70 test events. Then word spread that numerous hotel projects were way behind schedule. Ultimately, hundreds of hotel rooms weren't complete by the start of the Games earlier this month, though, as Killy pointed out, "nobody slept outside."

Some of the most severe problems were with hotels for media and staff near the Olympic Park that are to be converted into apartments after the Games. The project was run by the regional government and officials said it took nearly round-the-clock work in December and January to get them close to ready. Final work, such as installing bathroom fixtures, continued even after guests moved in.

Killy said the experience in Sochi is a lesson for the IOC as well as for organizers in Rio, who are currently behind schedule in construction of its Olympic Park, some 20 miles southwest of Rio. Construction on several venues has barely begun, including the swimming stadium and most of the 30-plus apartment buildings planned for housing athletes and media members.

"There is not a second to waste," said Payne, a top booster of Rio's bid.

Killy said Rio organizers should prepare for a grueling two years of work. "They are going to suffer," he said.

Sochi has suffered because key elements of the massive project weren't finished when the Games opened. Some hotels, both on the coast and in the mountains, made their deadlines.

But Gorky Gorod, one of the largest mountain developments, spanning apartments, a shopping mall and hotels, was still undergoing major structural work as late as the end of last year, according to witnesses.

"If you'd asked me a month ago if this is going to be ready, I'd have said it ain't gonna happen. But it did," said one hotel executive, who declined to be identified.

The main state-run bank, Sberbank, took over the Gorky project in 2012 after it fell far behind schedule under its previous developer, a little-known oligarch.

"One year and nine months ago, there wasn't even a design completed for the building we're now standing in," German Gref, head of Sberbank, told a pre-Olympic party in the rooftop water park at the top of the Gorky Gorod shopping mall on the night before the Feb. 7 opening ceremony. "I thought this mission was impossible," he said, adding that permits for the park's huge glass roof still hadn't been finalized.

The Marriott hotel—a 428-room, five-star hotel for top media and other Olympic guests—opened only Jan. 23, becoming the first hotel in Gorky Gorod to open its doors. Construction had taken only 18 months, and details like the spa and outdoor landscaping were still incomplete when the Games opened.

The other buildings in the complex, apartments and hotels for other guests, opened in the following days. But about half the rooms in one Swissotel weren't completed in time because of construction delays, and guests had to be relocated, officials said.

The funniest thing of all ,that all Russian trolls ,who always appear in comment section of articles about Russia disappear all at once.So called Gary Ru,D.Barinov ,Drut and few more nowhere to be found.FSB ordered to go easy on WSJ during Olympic games.

Jean-Claude Killy was a great skier but (obviously) underqualified for the position he now holds. Every statement he makes is a shovel-full of dirt deepening his own hole. They should have hired Mitt Romney. (Sound familiar?)

Bet Putin doesn't like having Russia referred to as a "developing nation" - and US propagandists probably don't like it either. US enemies must be AT LEAST as powerful as the US, otherwise US foreign policy is just a joke. Oh, wait...

To spend $50B on a sporting event while there are dozens of environmentally damaged sites around Russia that remain unaddressed after all these years is absolutely disgraceful. The Russians should never have been given the hosting duties, not while corruption is rampant and human rights issues are still at issue.

And where is this coming from? How much was paid for TV rights? A billion? It's to feed the insane American preoccupation with sports. I hope Americans will pay as much attention to Putin bombing the Ukraine after the games have concluded. Then you can sit back in your lounge chairs to watch basketball. This country is degenerating so fast I'm not sure we'll survive. Go back to the TV, America. You'll wake up one day and find it all gone.

Sadly, the IOC is an incestuous lot, with wonderful KNOW-NOTHING figureheads, for PR. The WSJ should do a piece on which politically connected contractors are engaged in fattening their bottom lines, in the coming Brazil fiasco.

"... good people, people from Harvard, Stanford, KGB"LOL, did anyone else get a laugh out of this? comparing institutions of higher learning with the KGB cracks me up. Though the student body of both Harvard and the body politic of the KGB would probably agree on their anti-US slant.

What is so telling is the statement that they only realized this past fall that they were behind schedule and were not going to make it! That is a clear sign that they were so far over their heads from the word go. The hotels should had been completed this past fall and then given two or three months to get up and operating in preparation for the Games. I feel for the people of Russia as overall the games are going well and Sochi appears to be a beautiful city but there is so much focus on the construction issues. The people of Russia are warm and wonderful people but unfortunately they are led by a corrupt government that is only worried about serving their own self interest. Oh wait, that sounds familiar…..

Killy is clueless. He was awestruck by Putin. By the reasoning of the IOC (put Olympics in countries that lack facilities) how is Sochi going to help. They had to truck in snow.The IOC just enabled Putin to put on a good show for his ego and enrich himself and his corrupt friends. The IOC did significant damage to Russians who will have to pay for this corruption. Typical socialists, they make themselves feel good by ignoring the facts and reality.

JCK was a truly great skier and a great Olympian, and it is not surprising that he would focus on the preparation of the sports venues. That he expected the private sector to be capable of completing the accommodations without significant IOC oversight is, in retrospect, perhaps overly optimistic, but not especially surprising. This will be a good learning experience for the Russian government and perhaps more so for the IOC. If this experience alerts them to the need for particularly careful monitoring of preparation for the summer games in Rio, it may prove to have been worth it all.

How is ability to race headlong down a mountain qualification to admisiter a mult-billion dollar project?

"... good people, people from Harvard, Stanford, KGB" hahaha. While I'm as skectical of left-leaning institutions of higher education in the US as the next, such a blithe, easy conflation of with the KGB is breath-taking.

The IOC is run by an unelected set of pompous European officials who are prone to corruption. They are good at promoting their brand but the public will eventually catch on that the Olympics are not the pure amateur sportsmanship international camaraderie games that they portray.

Gene Lebrenz -- you took the words from myy mouth! only in the minds of the socialist elite does blather like "the IOC has an obligation to spread its values of fair play and friendship through sports to the developing world, and to create opportunities for sports participation through the construction of world-class venues". What complete nonsense. These are Eurotrash wannabe royalty who occupy this organization. If ever you are in Lausanne Switzerland and have an hour, go visit the IOC "museum". It is filled to the brim with those sorts of self justification and self-importance. The IOC actually thinks of itself as a sovereign nation, a sort of UN of sport, whose right and duty it is to preach to the world about its view of politics and social organization of the world. And just like the UN, it is a playground for corruption and tyranny. No one Killy go along so famously with Comrade Putin.

Ha! It was a little more than that. The contruction destroyed hundreds, maybe thousands of Sochi National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Not to mention burying wetlands under countless tons of rubble and concrete.

Of course, environmental protests aren't allowed in Russia. Who needs clean water when you've got vodka?

Bad karma at work here, both from the IOC and from Russia. Nothing good will come from this.

Anybody who watched "60 Minutes" last night knows Putin can push a button and make $50 Billion debt vanish. Seize those companies/assets and call it a day- in two hours. It is the Soviet, or Russian, way. No difference with Putin in charge.

Why is anyone surprised by the results? This is Russia, where people pretend to work and the commies and cronies pretend to pay the workers. Central planning hasn't worked, doesn't work, and will never work to provide a high quality of life.

However, Rio will be even worse, and may have massive protests by the masses of poor and mistreated. Then, by the time the games are, once again, held in the U. S. and the narcissistic and perfidious dictator maobama has declared himself king for life (and the afterlife !), Russia may look good by comparison to what then exists in the U. S.

What? "learning experience for the Russian government"? LOL. $20 billion or more wasted on corrupt middlemen while the Russian taxpayers suffer.As for Brazil, maybe their "middlemen" will be the ones learning from this to exert more money from their taxpayers.

Killy, who won three Olympic gold medals skiing for France, said that despite making 40 trips to Sochi in the seven years leading up to the Games, he didn't understand the depth of the problem until last fall.

It will be considered racist to be critical of what happens in Rio, regardless of how disastrous it turns out to be, so the "mainstream" media in the US and Europe will no doubt have to work doubly hard to fabricate a positive spin.

the modern olympic games were re-established for altruistic reasons: basically to promote better relationships, between countries and individuals, and to reinforce western values of fair play, etc etc, through the avenue of sport. those days are largely gone at the bureaucratic level, but they come through on the level of the individual competitors.

The IOC is not a socialist elite, they are corruptible pompous autocrats, which is why they awarded these games to Putin. The populist verbiage about fair play and the like is cover for awarding games based on bribes and personal decisions. The IOC is no more socialist than Putin.

"model disappeared in 1989-92, you don't have a clue" Country USSR disappear.Model didn't.I am afraid you don't have a clue.Government of Russia largest shareholder of all top company outright and control all major decisions in others.Model based on world oil prices.The same as 35 years ago.

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